INSOMNIA
“What does the night sound like?” That is the question Mattias Spee tries to answer with Insomnia, a set of 9 original compositions, each depiciting a different stage in the sleepless night. In 2026, a live-recording Insomnia was released as an album by record label Challenge Records.
Dutch Classical Talent about Insomnia:
“Spee is an idiosyncratic and versatile musician, who also improvises and composes. In his playing, his air and his choice of repertoire, you can see his activist and rebellious nature. He doesn’t let anyone tell him what to do and completely sets his own course.”
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ECLIPSE
There is more music in the world than one person could listen to in a lifetime. Sometimes, we don’t see the forest for the trees, which means that a lot of fantastic music slips under our radar, music that begs questions like “Why have we never heard this before?” and “What other treasures are waiting to be discovered?”
Mattias Spee went on a “musical treasure hunt” to shed light on the hidden gems of the piano repertoire.
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THE LITTLE BLUE NOTEBOOK
Singaporean pianist Elizabeth Goh produced The Little Blue Notebook. This concert embodies the famous quote by Lewis Carroll: "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." Elizabeth searches for a lost notebook from her youth and on her journey rediscovers her uninhibited self. Beside the "regular" piano, there is special attention for the toy piano and Elizabeth is joined on the stage by dancer Ashley Ho.
The program includes pieces by Sofia Gubaidulina, George Crumb and Rudolf Escher. For this production, composer Mattias Spee wrote Yellow Eyes; a virtuoso piece, in which he challenges Elizabeth Goh to the limit, pianistically speaking. Apollon Kalamenios wrote a new composition for this production as well; an electronic piece, entitled And So Forth.
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INTO SILENCE
Dutch composer Jo Sporck celebrated his 70th birthday by writing a new concerto for piano and orchestra, commissioned by festival November Music. It was performed by Mattias Spee, accompanied by PhilZuid and conductor Ed Spanjaard. The piece interweaves several complex dance rhythms in irregular meters, which results in a light-footedness in spite of the harsh, piercing modernist vocabulary.
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RIVER
Mattias Spee usually composes by himself, but his collaboration with Bea Álvarez Borque, who specialises in live electronics, is a notable exception. Together they made the piece River, which illustrates the journey of a river from glacier to ocean.
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TIJDCAPSULES
What links us to our past and our future? That question was central to the project entitled Tijdcapsules, which premiered at the Grachtenfestival 2022. A team consisting of Arjan Linker on trombone, Mattias Spee on piano and synthesizer, Benjamin de Boer on double bass, Gijs Idema on guitar and Dimitri Geelhoed on electronics set out to answer this question.
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DANSEN MET DE DOOD
In collaboration with writer/director Tabula Raas and voice actor Céline Vermeulen, Mattias Spee made a radio play entitled Dansen met de Dood. This musical piece of theatre -or this theatrical piece of music- was inspired by William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and deals with the temptation of suicide and being released from suffering.
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